The invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for delivering and retrieving information, and in particular, to an information delivery method and apparatus employing digital simplex broadcast communication for transmitting information to one or more remote computer systems.
The computer is an excellent communications medium because of its ability to process, index, edit, and display information. That capability can be and has been applied on a large scale to communications within a community. However, building a computer system large enough to serve a community is a difficult problem. The problems are based in part upon cost as well as the capability necessary to serve many thousands of users from a central data source.
A community communications system should be able to serve an entire metropolitan area at a reasonable cost. The system should have a high quality user interface that is easily mastered by the most "computer illiterate" users. The privacy of individual users must be safeguarded while, at the same time, the services provided by the system should be secure and made available only to authorized users. The users should be able to process information drawn from the system in any way that they desire, and the user should also be able to have access to very large data bases. Finally, the system should be capable of having new applications added to its existing infrastructure without adversely affecting the previous operation of the equipment.
These problems have been approached in the past by broadcast systems wherein, for example, satellites broadcast data to a customer base. If customer received data contains uncorrectable errors, he can call the central data system using a standard duplex communication path to obtain the correct data. The prior art broadcast systems, however, are not designed to apply to the mass public and do not provide a convenient, easy to use system wherein the user is able to actively interface with a central data base and wherein the user has substantial control over information locally stored at his terminal.
Accordingly, therefore, it is a primary object of this invention to provide a user interactive information delivery apparatus and method in which the user can customize information stored locally and have access to a larger, more complete data base should that be required.
Other objects of the invention are an information delivery method and apparatus which is cost effective, which provides a high quality user interface, which provides users with a wide variety and large volume of information, which provides a safeguard to the privacy of users, which can be easily extended to new services, which allows users to process information from the system according to their needs, and which can be easily expanded to new applications within the existing infrastructure of the method and apparatus.